Black hobos shitting and shooting up in the middle of the streets flanked by gleaming skyscrapers while gay techies wearing backpacks and fleece vests IN AUGUST delicately walk around them.

Go down to the Valley and after the interminable multi hour wait in deadlocked traffic you're treated to strip malls and the spendor of repeated rows of identical office parks splashed with technology portmanteaus denoting company names. Set behind in backdrop is the sun beating on down dull brown brush and barren hills.

Oh yeah did I mention the traffic is soul crushing and rents/property costs are otherwordly?

They're oblivious and stuck in an unbelievable bubble where on demand everything is a viable business model despite negative gross margins and unit economics because interest rates are zero/negative and people are flinging money at any type of risk hoping for a return

The area went to shit post 2000. It will likely be worse this time because of the influx of foreign money will reverse

Yes people have been predicting recession for a while but Central Banks are doing their best to stave it off. We will see how long it can last. If you're assertion is that a recession will never happen again, well you're going to be just as mistaken as Zero Hedgers

prices dropped like 30-40% after a massive run-up, still ending far above where they were before that boom-bust cycle. the same will very likely happen in the next recession. the bay area is never going to really "crash", maybe permanently flat line at some point.

It's a Tier 1 coastal city with heavily constrained supply. it's not going to suddenly be worthless but you're going to see a nasty correction exacerbated by foreign money pulling out All the recent domestic buyers are leveraged on overvalued equity

Those $4M shit houses in the valley? Good luck

Those VC backed startups with gleaming new office space burning cash like crazy? Good luck

When "store of value" investments drop 30%+ (instead of, well, storing your value) you pull your cash. It's not like people actually living in the property who have an impediment of needing to move out before selling. You pull the ripcord and you sell. You buy treasuries. You buy precious metals.

Only worth it to live in Silicon Valley or SF if you grew up there. Ideally, live with your parents so you don't pay the outrageous housing costs and save up . But moving there voluntarily? awful decision

Why, other than cost and all of the "good" schools being AZN-influenced arms-races? I moved here and have come to really like it.

Not buying property here is actually a mistake. I'm so far ahead of peers who didn't buy when stuff was low in 2010-2011 or so. It could lose a third of its value, I guess, but it's always bounced back and even then, I'm in a house enjoying a yard and a real neighborhood while they're still worried about rent increases, etc. in their mid-30s. It's expensive and I definitely gulped when signing away almost all of my non-401(k) assets for the initial down payment, but it's doable if you prioritize.

It took ~$120K down in 2010 to buy a townhouse. For two biglawyers or other professionals who live beneath their means, that's significant but doable. Also, between the 2 of us, we had been ITEd 3 times at that point. I acknowledge that we got very lucky on timing and that our paper gains could be halved if things turn south or Chinese people decide not to be irrational about Bay Area RE, but we weren't some finance ballers making $500K each. We also could have been canned again and had to scramble.

If you're not willing to play the SF/SV game, then I agree that this is no place to be.

you all are too myopic. in 7 years, my wife and i were able to leverage our T14 JDs into senior in-house positions at SV tech companies where our annual household income is north of $650k, where we've seen our house accrue $850k in equity, and where our companies permit us 100% telecommuting w/o salary adjustment allowing us to cash out and move to ARE COUNTRY. we didn't have any special connections or anything - we just weren't chickenshit about life and stretched our finances to get in on the real estate game.

so while you all avoid this place or freeze up because the hills are brown or there's piss in the streets, we were busy maxing it out.

everyone who bought real estate in CA before like 2014 thinks they're investing geniuses. boomers especially are terrible about it. "i bought a house for 300k in 1990 and now it's wroth 3M, you need to buy as much real estate as you can, thats how you make real wealth!"

there are still sleeper neighborhoods in the bay area. think areas that people avoid because of "the weather" (and thus haven't appreciated much since the recession) but are becoming increasingly convenient to tech companies as they move into parts of SF.

even without the real estate play, a lifehack is getting in with a tech company with lenient remote work/telecommuting policies. this area is high tech after all so in-person face time becomes less of a requirement once you prove yourself and technology means you can "meet" from anywhere. so cop dat high salary and position, then bolt to ARE COUNTRY and live like a king while you telecommute.

not where we're moving, although i did grow up in another part of ARE COUNTRY. but our employers will still be in SV. but we'll literally be at a top 1% salary bracket where we're moving and are building a custom home in the best neighborhood full of people with good ol' boy ARE MONEY. so we'll develop connections organically as we support local civic engagements and mingle with the home crowd. it's how my parents became "adopted natives" where i grew up so i'm gonna use the same playbook. wife and i both hunt and fish and that's big where we moving.

i've golfed a few rounds with the guy i bought the land from and he's going to sponsor us for the country club. i also have a private pilot's license and will join the local flying club. between that and hunting, we'll have plenty of acquaintances.

it sure does if you partake in the same hobbies and have similar viewpoints to those around you. it's not like we're SJW trying to make in with the homecrowd. and anyway, who cares as long as we have an awesome house and send our kids to the best schools? it's not like we get along with any of the shitheads in SV as it is. if nothing else we're a few hours' drive away from the SEC town where i grew up.

aren't you all missing the point of this subthread? OP said "SV sucks.". i poast how it in fact affords incomparable career opportunities and flexibility so you don't have to stick around and actually end up ahead than if you had parked yourself somewhere else. if you're white, even better. you can totally live out the ARE COUNTRY dream at the top after maxing out SV career advancement.

i don't see what the counterargument is. avoid SV and start off in ARE COUNTRY where you remain forever some good ol' boy's bitch and maybe make the salary in 30 years that you can take with you from SV after 7-10?

Yes you can end up ahead if you got extremely lucky. It's difficult to replicate the same success without timing on your side. And I say this as one of the extremely lucky ones who graduated at the right time and bought a foreclosure in 2011 (in LA). For every one of you, there's somebody else who bought in 2006 and then got layoff owned and foreclosed upon in 2011 and there's somebody else who graduated in 2011 and couldn't get an in house job until 2015-2016. You certainly can't say somebody can replicate what you did in the next 7 years, particularly with the market at an all time high.

then shouldn't they just rent, get promotions in SV, and then try to arrange to work remotely from their ARE COUNTRY dreamland? the only thing the real estate play got me was a custom house in ARE COUNTRY and private school tuition. but you can be a homeowner and live luxuriously in ARE COUNTRY even w/o a lot of equity.

aside from myself, i know many people in SV who have done this. having to wait 4-5 years to get in-house is fairly typical, but things can blossom fairly rapidly thereafter if you're good at what you do.

I basically did this and almost definitely would have found a different job if I wasn't able to. It's the easiest way for employers to retain ppl w/o having pensions and benefits getting increasingly worse.